Of
all the methods devised by state, clergy or medical profession
for curing alcoholism--prohibition, imprisonment, will power,
electric shock, etc.--none has ever been so popular or so
highly publicized as Alcoholics Anonymous. And so far as
the limited aim is concerned of helping people deprive themselves
of alcohol, there seems no doubt that the popularity is
deserved.

Where
other methods tend to say, "Now you are cured; go back
to your life,” this voluntary association of 15,000
members is unique in offering not a “cure” so
much as a “life.” Not drinking becomes in itself
an absorbing occupation, providing fellowship, prestige
and--in spite of an absurd body of crude medico-religious
dogma--a very real communal faith. Obviously no one can
give up a symptom without finding at least a partial satisfaction
for its cause, which in this case is intricately related
to the social structure. It is no indictment of the method
itself, therefore, to criticize the kind of life celebrated
by AA, or to suggest that what really goes on bears no relation
to the blueplate values offered as explanation and inducement.
These are not people driven to self-denial because of any
deep awareness of interpersonal failure or spiritual emptiness
in their lives; usually they have found that alcohol was
threatening such real possessions as job, family or the
deference paid them by the less addicted. It is hardly surprising
if the compensatory social life which they achieve together
must be glorified by women’s magazine phrases and
lodge-meeting principles.

The
advantage of the present 300-page pamphlet (disguised as
a pulp-style novel) over the shorter booklets distributed
by AA, lies in its detailed revelations of group activity.
While the formal weekly meetings are devoted to inspirational
talks by ex-alcoholics, coffee is drunk in no blue-nose
spirit; good fellowship abounds (“You can get that
sense of abandon without liquor”). AA members feel
a natural solidarity: the way they would “get up and
talk at meetings, really let their hair down, made -other
contacts seem thin and superficial. Other people shadowy.”
And while AA insists that it has no ambition to impose sobriety
on the nation, its members feel a natural willingness to
share their benefits with any applicant. They are “on
call,” so to speak, day and night, answering requests
for aid or enlightenment from strangers or backsliding fellows.
Each member is at once both patient and physician: only
from a fellow alcoholic can they receive that acceptance,
without condescension, which society has withheld. As physician,
setting an example to others, they have an incentive toward
sobriety, but it seems to me they gain something more valuable
as well: the privilege of adult responsibility without its
full rigors. They feel free to become a child—a patient--again,
whenever necessary. But in practice, of course, this dual
role must cause some paralyzing inter-alcoholic confusions--depending
on who is treating whom at the moment. Prestige is gained
primarily through one’s success in not drinking; second,
through one’s talent for mutual aid. Occasionally
an unregenerate member is subjected to social ostracism.
(“But probably every field has it lunatic fringe.“)

One
assumption is that only an alcoholic can understand an alcoholic.
Within obvious limits this is true, but the quality of understanding
is rather doubtful. Tag-lines of popular psychiatry, which
serve as passwords in the organization, also serve to prevent
any first-hand insight, while non-psychiatric under- standing
seems on an equally debased level. There is perhaps a fortunate
discrepancy, however, between the “religious”
flavor of the pamphlets and the actual beliefs and practices
deducible from the novelistic dialogue. The “Greater
Power” so earnestly invoked in print is the kind of
genteel deity, heavily infused with Buchmanism and popular
science, to which a smart advertising man might subscribe
in a mawkish moment. This has little to do with the prevailing
faith, a strong group loyalty, which activates AA members
and undoubtedly supplies another missing factor in their
lives. A good sociologist might learn a great deal about
our present society by watching the operation of this paradox:
the social values that have, to some degree, driven the
alcoholic to drink, are here recreated in microcosm but
with enough empiric differences, apparently, to act as an
effective substitute for drinking. Even with its preposterous
ragbag of theory, AA has something of communicable value
to offer the social sciences, but so far no psychiatrist
has been enough of a sociologist, and no sociologist enough
of a psychiatrist, to discover what it is.